Busan mayor wraps up Expo bid campaign in Africa

• Published date: 06 March 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon has finished his trip to Africa, wrapping up the mission to promote the city's 2030 Expo bid against Riyadh and Rome.

While the mayor's visits have drawn promises from each country to support the city's bid, they also resulted in agreements on expanding bilateral ties to create more opportunities for exchanges in businesses, education and solutions for common problems.

Park returned from his visits to three African countries as 170 member states of the Bureau International des Expositions are expected to vote during the Paris-based organization's general assembly in November to pick the city that will host the World Expo 2030. Park has been meeting heads of countries in South America, Southeast Asia and Europe since last year, asking them to support his city's bid.

Park most recently visited Angola on March 1, meeting President Joao Lourenco. The mayor requested the president to vote for his city in the BIE general assembly in November and discussed ways in which Busan can support the African nation in various sectors, including new environmental policies to fight the climate crisis and improve policies on energy, wastewater treatment, education and public health.

The president said there already are business exchanges between Angola and Korea including petroleum and shipbuilding. As well, an increasing number of Korean firms recently started investing in the country in the fields of fishery and processed seafood, according to President Lourenco.

The president, according to the Diplomacy and Trade Division under the Busan city government's 2030 Expo Bid Promotion Headquarters, said both nations have been "maintaining a good relationship, therefore I expect Busan will see a good result."

Another proposition Park made to the Angolan leader was that not just Angola's top-tier government officials but also young locals and public workers will visit Busan and learn how it became Korea's biggest port city.

"For any development cooperation project between the two different countries to wind up developing more in-depth planning, what must follow is the exchange of manpower," Park told the president.

The two ended their meeting with mutual agreement that Busan and the Angolan capital of Luanda sign a bilateral sister city partnership in the near future. Luanda, within the province of the same name, is Angola's primary port city as well as the country's leading industrial and cultural center ? much like Busan. The trade division of the Busan...